Show HN: Hank – Simplest CLI tool to get errors in plain English (github.com)

Hank is a minimal CLI utility that translates opaque error messages into plain English — just prefix your usual commands with hank (e.g., hank python my_script.py, hank make all, hank go run main.go or even hank ls nonexistent_dir) and it prints a readable explanation of any errors that occur. The project positions itself as a tiny, always-available debugging helper (think grep/ls/echo for errors) rather than a full agentic terminal like Warp. Importantly, the prototype uses local language models only, so logs stay on your machine instead of being sent to remote LLM services — a practical win for developers working under NDAs or with sensitive data, at the plausible tradeoff of slightly lower chat polish. Technically, hank requires LMStudio serving a model in Developer Mode and expects the model to be reachable at http://127.0.0.1:1234. The author reports success with gemma-3 12B, LFM-1.2B and gpt-oss 20B but any compatible local model should work. Installation currently requires building from source (Go >= 1.24.3); you can go install github.com/dillondesilva/hank@main or clone the repo and run the provided install script. It’s lightweight, privacy-focused tooling that integrates into existing workflows; future improvements and feature requests are tracked on the GitHub repo.